Ad Disclosure
The quarterback position in the SEC is as intriguing as it has been in years.
There are the stars (Chad Kelly, Joshua Dobbs), the touted young guns (Blake Barnett, Jacob Eason) and enough uncertainty to make keeping up with spring practice news worthwhile.
We spent the last two months doing some reporting on each team’s quarterback situation to bring you as much information as possible on the position for each of the 14 teams. We’ve talked to several of the quarterbacks, coaches and the writers who cover them.
Below you’ll find links to each of our feature stories, as well as an excerpt from each story (in some cases, lightly edited).
ALABAMA
Cooper Bateman and Blake Barnett would be the two favorites if you were handicapping things, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only contenders. Nick Saban has shown that he’ll take his time to settle on a quarterback, so it seems unlikely that things will get resolved in spring.
If Barnett is as talented as his recruiting status suggests, Alabama’s passing game could set program standards while keeping sideline photographers busy trying to catch Lane Kiffin raising his arms mid-play, as he’s known to do.
He brings a dangerous and different dynamic — a big-play strike that Coker so perfectly executed against Michigan State and Clemson.
ARKANSAS
This scenario has played out before for Austin Allen. And it played out well.
Allen is a junior quarterback at the University of Arkansas. For the last three years, he’s mostly watched from the bench as his big brother Brandon led the high-powered Razorbacks offense. But Brandon has graduated now, and now it’s Austin’s turn to take over.
Again.
The same scenario played out five years ago at Fayetteville High School. After Brandon started for three years before heading off to Arkansas, Austin took over and started for two years. All he did was win two state championships.
He was that good, and the transition was that easy.
And it will be again.
“You never knew back then that Austin was a first-year starter, and I really believe it will be the same thing at U of A,” said Daryl Patton, the legendary football coach at Fayetteville High School who has won four state titles in his 14 years there and coached both Allen boys.
“He’s been sitting and watching and listening and learning and he will be ready to play. He has all the talent in the world but he’s also very, very smart.
“He’s one of those really cool John Wayne types, where nothing upsets him. He’ll be able to handle everything they throw at him and I am completely confident that he’s going to have a lot of success there.”
AUBURN
Jeremy Johnson has a chance to be atop the depth chart again. All he has to do is be the best QB in camp. But fans are fickle. Many supporters on The Plains want to turn the page.
What separates John Franklin III from Johnson, Sean White and Tyler Queen are his wheels. As a matter of fact, he’s not even classified as a quarterback on the roster at the team’s official website. He’s listed as an “athlete.”
There is no shortage of choices for the Tigers at the game’s most important position in 2016. Whether coach Gus Malzahn picks the right one could determine his fate at Auburn beyond this coming season.
FLORIDA
The 2015 campaign at Florida was a success by any measure, as the Gators won 10 games, captured the SEC East and made an appearance in the conference championship game under first-year coach Jim McElwain.
Nevertheless, the offense was an abject failure once starting quarterback Will Grier got popped by the NCAA for performance-enhancing drugs. He sat out the final eight games.
McElwain and Co. are hitting the reset button at the game’s most important position once spring practice arrives.
Gator Nation is quite eager to see how the coaching staff splits the snaps this spring. Luke Del Rio appears to be the early front-runner since he practiced with the team last year upon arriving from Corvallis.
“I think Feleipe Franks, Kyle Trask, Austin Appleby and Del Rio will all get a shot,” Bob Redman said. “Del Rio is going to be way ahead in terms of knowing the offense, and I think McElwain and (offensive coordinator Doug) Nussmeier would like to go with the older guys.”
GEORGIA
Most fan bases would be licking their chops for a 10-win team that returns its starting quarterback.
But that doesn’t seem to be the case at Georgia, where Greyson Lambert completed 63.3 percent of his passes in 2015 and assembled a touchdown-to-interception ratio of 12-to-2.
Lambert will be joined by Brice Ramsey, a coveted recruit once upon a time who has played sparingly in reserve duty the last two years. But Jacob Eason, a five-star signee and early enrollee, is the future.
When exactly is “the future?” By nature, it’s a nebulous term. For a lot of QBs, it means sitting and watching for a year or two before earning a chance to enter the huddle — maybe even redshirting right out of high school. However, that’s not expected to be the case for Eason. Not only is he going to compete for the job immediately, but it might even be a disappointment if he doesn’t start the season opener.
We’ll know more about coach Kirby Smart once he makes up his mind at the game’s most important position.
KENTUCKY
Kentucky football still is very much a work-in-progress in Year 4 under Mark Stoops.
Drew Barker, in fact, still has work to do just to win the starting job.
Kentucky brought in two new offensive minds — Eddie Gran and Darin Hinshaw — from Cincinnati. They know Barker well; they recruited him when he was coming out of Conner High, just across the Ohio River from the Bearcats’ campus.
So their first interaction this winter as coaches-player lacked the typical anxiety. Theirs was much more like business partners renewing acquaintances than a job interview.
They talked football, of course. They discussed schemes and techniques and philosophy. They praised Barker’s throwing mechanics. But they also delivered a message.
“They said you guys are starving for somebody to be a leader, we need someone to take over and it might as well be you,” Barker said, “so I’ve put myself into a leadership position on the team. And I feel like everybody is starting to follow suit. That’s pretty much what the first conversations were like.”
Barker embraced the vote of confidence, even though he knows he’ll have to fend off JUCO transfer Stephen Johnson for the starting job this fall.
LSU
One rarely ever hears this about a Les Miles-coached LSU football team, but when the Tigers began spring drills Monday, they came out of the locker room throwing the football.
Miles called it an “inordinate” amount of passes the Tigers threw to start spring drills, an emphasis he promised to maintain throughout spring drills.
Is this spring about getting the incumbent Brandon Harris better, or is it about a competition in which Harris has to fight for his job?
“He’s going to be given a chance,” ESPN.com’s David Ching said of Danny Etling. “From what he did last year with the scout team after transferring and having to sit out a year, I think he impressed them. I think they are willing to give him a shot.”
Is that enough to make him a legitimate challenger to Harris? Perhaps, but at the least, LSU is hoping that he provides enough of a challenge to at least spur improvement from the incumbent.
MISSISSIPPI STATE
Mississippi State started spring practice with a strange new look. There was no Dak Prescott taking snaps at quarterback for the first time since 2011 – and that’s a scary thought.
That’s college football, of course. Players come and go. But Prescott leaves Starkville after almost three years as a starter as the most beloved Bulldogs player ever. Mississippi State will never be the same without him, so the story goes.
But don’t write off coach Dan Mullen and his Bulldogs just yet. Four guys went through drills at the quarterback spot Wednesday and all spring long there is going to be an intense battle for the starting position. The fight will probably go all the way to the fall.
The QB race is wide open, though it seemed Nick Fitzgerald was probably the favorite at the start of the spring. He’s big too – 6-foot-5 and 227 pounds – and very athletic. He’s impressed coaches last year and shadowed Prescott everywhere, absorbing everything he can. His ascension to starter seems about right.
MISSOURI
Look at it this way, Missouri fans: It can’t get much worse.
In 2015, the Tigers were historically bad offensively, finishing 125th in the country in total yards and averaging an anemic 13.6 points per game.
Both on the field and off, there wasn’t a college football program in 2015 that dealt with more drama than Missouri. Maty Mauk was suspended multiple times, which led to Drew Lock unexpectedly being thrown to the wolves as a true freshman.
Yes, the line needs to protect better. Yes, the runners need to break more tackles. Yes, the receivers need to get open more consistently. Lock is the trigger man, though.
In all likelihood, Lock will make or break Mizzou’s season. If he turns into the kind of passer that caught the attention of Urban Meyer and Charlie Strong as a high schooler, then Odom has a chance to right the ship in Year 1.
OLE MISS
Ole Miss enters the 2016 season with the SEC’s best quarterback.
Chad Kelly picked up where predecessor Bo Wallace left off, and then some.
As a junior Kelly broke Wallace’s school-record for completions in a season (298). He threw for 4,042 yards, most in Rebels’ history and third-most in SEC history. And he tossed 31 touchdown passes, which led the SEC and tied Eli Manning for the school’s single-season record.
Here’s the not-so-good news: Ole Miss must replace four offensive linemen and one of the best receivers in program history. Couple that with the fact that beyond Kelly, Ole Miss has no player on the roster who has thrown a single pass in college football.
“On the other hand,” Jeffrey Gray said, “the return of Damore’ea Stringfellow, Quincy Adeboyejo and Evan Engram coupled with an infusion of young talent means Kelly’s receiving corps might be even deeper this season than it was in 2015.
“With a veteran stable of running backs and a healthier interior line, he should also have a better ground game to lean on.”
SOUTH CAROLINA
In a perfect world, college football teams enter spring practice with at least one experienced quarterback. Even if that guy was a reserve who only mopped up in blowouts.
In that perfect world, the coaching staff returns pretty much intact, the playbooks stay the same and teams can spend spring practice fine tuning, rather than rebuilding.
The world is not perfect for South Carolina. Far from it.
There’s a new coach in Will Muschamp, a new coordinator calling the plays in Kurt Roper and a handful of quarterbacks competing to take the first snap when the Gamecocks visit Nashville on the first Thursday night in September.
There are guys who can run (Lorenzo Nunez and Brandon McIlwain), guys who can throw (Connor Mitch and Michael Scarnecchia) and the guy who did enough to start eight games for the Gamecocks last fall (Perry Orth).
Assuming that Roper’s past affinity for mobile quarterbacks carries over, Nunez and McIlwain would seem to be the frontrunners.
TENNESSEE
The hype surrounding the 2016 Tennessee football team is coming through loud and clear from many directions, even some five-plus months from the beginning of the season.
And unlike the past unfulfilled hype that has made cynics of some SEC fans, this time it appears to be warranted.
Perhaps the most intriguing ingredient to the team, one that could take the Vols from ‘pretty good’ to ‘elite,’ is quarterback Joshua Dobbs.
Entering his senior season, there is a strong argument to be made that Dobbs is the single-most important player on any team in the SEC East.
With him playing at his best, the Vols have a chance to make a run at their first division crown since 2007 and perhaps their first SEC Championship since 1998.
Without that, they’re likely just another flawed team in a division that has been overshadowed by the SEC West for the better part of a decade.
TEXAS A&M
A year ago, the question of who would be Texas A&M’s starting quarterback in 2016 would have caused a passionate debate. The Aggies seemed so loaded, so secure. In back-to-back recruiting classes (2014-15), Aggies coach Kevin Sumlin pulled in a five-star talent at the position, first Kyle Allen, then Kyler Murray.
Maybe that was the problem. Two of the nation’s top quarterback signees on the same team, vying for playing time, neither afforded the opportunity to learn from mistakes because another five-star was warming up on the sideline.
With Murray going to the Sooners to compete with former walk-on Baker Mayfield, who guided the Sooners to the 2015 College Football Playoff and finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting, Oklahoma graduate Trevor Knight filled the vacancy at Texas A&M by transferring to College Station.
Knight, who played in 24 games with the Sooners, starting 15, is eligible immediately and will compete against deep reserve Jake Hubenak for the Aggies’ starting job. Knight has proven not only the ability to lead a big-time college program, but also excel on the biggest stages.
In time we’ll find out if Knight is the quick-fix savior of a program in disarray at the end of last season, but he’s the best-case scenario given the circumstances.
VANDERBILT
When Vanderbilt takes the field against South Carolina on Sept. 1, the Commodores will send out their sixth opening day starter at quarterback in as many years.
Change at the position has become a way of life in Nashville, through both the success of former coach James Franklin and the struggles of current coach Derek Mason.
Mason has started five different quarterbacks during his two-year tenure, including four in 2014 alone. Needless to say, the Commodores hope to find a more permanent solution in 2016. And if we’re being honest, the future of Mason’s tenure as Vanderbilt’s head coach may depend on it.
Kyle Shurmur didn’t set the world on fire once he was handed the keys to the Commodores offense during the 2015 season, he kept his head above water. And that was enough to make him the team’s best option at the position.
Mason is optimistic that he may finally have a stable base on which offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig can build his offense.
An itinerant journalist, Christopher has moved between states 11 times in seven years. Formally an injury-prone Division I 800-meter specialist, he now wanders the Rockies in search of high peaks.
